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Dessert

French Bread Pudding

A custard-filled bread pudding made with jam, butter, eggs, powdered sugar, and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Bread Pudding

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter small thin squares of bread and spread with jam or jelly.

  2. Place the bread in a buttered pudding dish, filling it about halfway.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a boiled custard using only the egg yolks and pour it over the bread.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding powdered sugar.

  2. Fold in 1 tablespoon of the jam or jelly, then heap it on top of the custard.

  3. Brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, while whipped whites give the topping its light, airy structure.
Bread
Soaks up the custard so the pudding sets into a soft, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on the surface.
Jam or jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the bread layer and the topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped whites, sweetening and stabilising the meringue-style topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks with sugar added gradually, so the foam holds its shape and bakes into a light topping instead of collapsing.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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